Written by

Amanda Seitz

Daily Herald Media

Federal officials have refused to lift a ban on federal funding for a proposed $15 million road-widening project Wausau officials planned for Thomas Street.

City staff members met with officials from the Federal Highway Administration last Thursday, three months after the federal agency sent a letter to Wausau Mayor Jim Tipple notifying him that the road construction project would be ineligible for funding and the city would be placed on a three-year watch list. Those sanctions were handed down after a months-long federal investigation revealed city officials never informed property owners of their rights, never appraised homes and didn’t offer relocation costs to most property owners before buying 10 homes along Thomas Street to make way for the project.

During last week’s meeting, which was orchestrated by state Sen. Jerry Petrowski of Stettin, federal officials told city employees that they need to look at alternative options to rebuild the roughly 1.25-mile strip of Thomas Street, a heavily traveled east-west corridor that has long been in line for reconstruction.

“I guess the bottom line was, if we keep the (project as is,) we are ineligible for federal money,” Public Works Director Brad Marquardt said Wednesday, while giving an update on the street project’s status to a city committee.

Federal officials told Marquardt, Tipple and Community Development Director Ann Werth that the current proposed project cannot be split into two separate projects to become eligible for federal money.

Marquardt said city officials are working to draw up cost estimates to approach the project in alternate ways and still receive federal funding. Federal officials suggested different, but “risky,” routes the city could explore to rebuild the street and possibly qualify for state and federal aid, Marquardt said.

The project could get federal money if the city doesn’t build the road on any of the properties it improperly purchased, Marquardt said. Or, the city could sell those properties it bought in violation of federal rules, simply resurface Thomas Street and then relaunch the widening project again in several years, he said. To receive federal funding, the city also could reconstruct the road but not widen it to four lanes, as initially proposed.

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“We know now that there’s options, but we need to evaluate how much risk we’re willing to take,” City Council President Lisa Rasmussen said during Wednesday’s meeting.

Those options are risky, Marquardt said, because the city could sacrifice its original plan to widen the road and still not receive any federal help for the project.

Marquardt said he’s unsure whether the city’s ineligible for state money but acknowledged that most state grants for major road projects are funded partly with federal aid.

City officials also will consider funding the project entirely through local tax money. The street sits in a tax increment district, an area that allocates all of its local tax revenues to fund community improvement projects, and the city has set aside roughly $13 million in that district for the Thomas Street project. The other $2 million necessary for the project could be taken from the city’s annual road improvement budget, Marquardt said.

Marquardt did not have any cost estimates for the plans and said he’s unsure of which plan would be the best option for the city. The City Council’s street maintenance committee will receive updates on the costs of alternative options for Thomas Street sometime in January.

Council member Sherry Abitz, who represents a large number of the residents living on Thomas Street, said Wednesday that she hopes residents will soon know the future of the road, which has been planned for a redesign for a decade. The city estimates up to 90 properties along the street could be affected by the proposed project.

“I want to apologize to the citizens down on Thomas Street for the delay,” Abitz said. “Hopefully, we can move forward now.”